2014 marks the 75th anniversary of the world premiere of 'Gone With the Wind.' Along with the celebration, there is heated discussion going on about the movie. We hear from actress Kerry Washington and others about the historical significance of the film.

'Gone With the Wind' at 75

On the eve of its 75th anniversary, 'Gone With the Wind' is yet again being celebrated as a timeless movie classic.

The film will be screened this weekend in 650 theaters nationwide, broadcast Monday by Turner Classic Movies and reissued Tuesday in a lavish home-video box set. It includes a music box, an embroidered handkerchief and more than eight hours of bonus features.

But with the celebration has come discussion of how "Gone With the Wind," widely considered one of the greatest films of all time, also has its shortcomings. Some argue that the Civil War epic's portrayal of slavery as dated and inaccurate.

"In 'Gone With the Wind,' slavery is portrayed in the most benevolent terms. Characters like Mammy are looked at like family members. And there's no hint of any sort of wrongdoing, any sort of. The slave masters do nothing in the film that seems inappropriate," filmmaker/historian Gary Leva said.

Based on Margaret Mitchell's 1936 best seller, "Gone With the Wind" is about a spoiled Old South socialite named Scarlett O'Hara. But the real-life war that serves as her story's backdrop looms too large in the film for many to overlook what the movie itself does.

Actress Hattie McDaniel, who played Scarlett's devoted nanny, a slave, became the first African-American actor to be nominated for and win an Academy Award.

Nevertheless, the film's portrayal of black characters has been criticized ever since its world premiere in Atlanta in 1939.

"To me, 'Gone With the Wind' is a perfect example of story telling from a particular perspective. Certain people were in charge of telling the story, so certain messaging is in that film that is very different from when other people get to tell that story about that time period. You know, you compare 'Gone With the Wind' and 'Django (Unchained)' -- and they're very different films about the same period of time, with a lot of the same imagery, dealt with in very different ways," actress Kerry Washington said.

Some believe that "Gone With the Wind" has an important place in the history of filmmaking, in the history of African-Americans at the Oscars, and in how to portray history generally.

"The fact that the 75th anniversary of 'Gone With the Wind' comes in the same year that '12 Years a Slave' wins -- it makes it, for a change, a little bit simple. Like, 'Look what kind of progress we've made?' And if somebody has, what, six-and-a-half hours to view both? That's a pretty good way to get a little cross-section of studying America and studying Hollywood simultaneously," said Ben Mankiewicz, host of Turner Classic Movies.

At least the movie gets one thing right: Tomorrow is, indeed, another day.

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